#49 Sentenced to 500 Years in Prison - Ron Adkins — Compelled Podcast

At the age of 19, Ron was sentenced to almost 500 years in prison.

Ron was filled with rage and became a leader in a white supremacist prison gang. Eventually, Ron became so violent he was locked up in solitary confinement and told he would stay there until he died. Condemned by society and separated from humanity, Ron knew that he was utterly alone... or was he?

The following is a summary of the podcast interview above with Ron Adkins. Many more details are included in the original podcast episode and we encourage you to listen.

Written by Jace Bower

The Wrong Crowd

Ron Adkins’ life began with a miracle.

His parents were told they couldn’t have children but twelve years into their marriage, Ron was born.

Ron’s mother was a sweet and joyful Christian woman. His father was a veteran who had served in the Korean War whose experiences had left him angry and violent. From a very young age, Ron clashed with his father and experienced verbal and physical abuse.

Due to his mother’s faith, the family attended church, but Ron never took it seriously. He viewed God as an angry and vindictive person, just like his father.

When Ron was thirteen, he left home and got a job at a horse ranch. This introduced him to drugs, alcohol, and bad influences from other peers.

As Ron continued hanging out with the wrong crowd, he started getting into trouble. He broke into a school with some friends and had his first encounter with the wrong side of the law. He continued to commit break-ins, steal, and burglarize throughout his teenage years,

Sentenced to 500 Years in Prison

After years of trouble with the law, the State of Texas was tired of dealing with Ron. At the age of nineteen, he was sentenced to 5 separate 99-year sentences in prison for his burglary offenses.

This was during the 1990s, when Texas was going through an era known as "tough on crime". There was very little leniency for criminal conduct, especially for repeat offenders.

And unlike today, where oftentimes a prisoner will serve multiple sentences concurrently, these 5 sentences were to be served consecutively. Meaning, once Ron finished his first 99 year sentence, he would then begin the next 99 year sentence, until he had finished 495 consecutive years.

Ron was shocked. He had expected a much lighter sentence and was now faced with the fate of spending the rest of his life in prison.

When he entered prison, he used his physical size to his advantage to protect himself. Ron became increasingly violent. He joined the Aryan Circle, a white supremacist gang in the prison and rose in the ranks to become a gang leader.

Participating in the prison gang led Ron to even more violent behavior. He joined several prison riots and earned the nickname “Rhino” for his size and rage. He also became a target. But no matter what the other prisoners’ intentions were, Ron was miraculously kept safe. Like one occasion when another prisoner intended to stab Ron but handed their knife in to a guard and confessed the plot - something that Ron wouldn’t appreciate as God’s protection until many years later.

The Violent Cycle

Over time, Ron’s violence landed him solitary confinement. He was placed in a 5 foot by 8 foot cell, alone, without any interaction with other inmates. He would stay here for 13 years.

The solitary confinement, coupled with the hopelessness of his sentence, drove Ron wild with anger and bitterness. He stopped caring about the consequences of his actions since there was nothing left to lose. He assaulted guards and prison staff, eventually racking up over 250 violations and countless staff assaults, many with bodily harm.

Ron wanted to die but couldn’t bring himself to commit suicide. Instead, he regularly put himself in dangerous situations, hoping that something would happen to him.

The solitary confinement forced him to face his worst enemy: himself. Ron hated his own self.

He was in a continuous cycle of rage that he felt was justified. He felt he didn’t deserve his 5 separate 99-year sentences and had a personal vendetta against the guards who subdued him during his time in solitary. This cycle looked like it would last until Ron’s death with no end in sight.

But something happened that served as a wake-up call for Ron.

A Wake-Up Call

In 2005, Ron’s dad passed away. This struck him in an unexpected way. He worried about his mom who was now living on her own.

He knew he had to escape the cycle of rage, so he began to read books from the prison library. He read about psychology, philosophy, and even world religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, although these seemed distasteful since he was now an avowed atheist. Ron even tried academic exercises like poetry and correspondence chess.

But despite his best efforts, Ron continued in his pattern of rage and violence.

He was eventually transferred to a maximum security prison in Texarkana, Texas. At the same time, he was indicted for another violation for smuggling a prohibited cell phone into prison. He was told that he would be handed another 99-year sentence for this.

This blow was too much. Ron already knew he didn't have a chance of getting out of prison, but to be told he would be given yet another 99 year sentence was crushing. He couldn't muster the courage to commit suicide, but already, on the inside he felt like he was dying.

No Longer Alone

Whatever meager hope Ron held onto for being released had vanished. He felt utterly broken, utterly worthless, and utterly alone...

But then one night, out of nowhere… Ron felt a presence in his cell. He had no other words to describe it but knew that it was the Spirit of God. The God he had learned about as a child, but who he had cursed and forsaken. For the first time in 15 years, Ron wept.

He had a Bible in his cell which he had kept for the last decade to write addresses in. He had also ripped out pages for smoking tobacco that had been illegally smuggled in. Ron had already smoked through most of the pages of the Old Testament, but the New Testament remained. And for the first time in prison, Ron began to read the Bible.

As Ron read the New Testament, he began to learn about God’s great love for him. He felt the love of Christ in that moment in the prison cell. God also brought memories to Ron’s mind that showed him how God had been protecting him all those years in prison.

John 13-17 in particular stood out to Ron as he read through his Bible… the prayer that Christ offered to the Father on our behalf just before the crucifixion especially moved Ron. The love that the Father had for the Son was also extended to him.

Since that day, Ron never assaulted another guard or other prisoner. In fact, he never received another disciplinary infraction for the remainder of his time in prison.

An Unexpected Miracle

Ron struck a plea bargain deal for his latest indictment (for smuggling in the cell phone) and received only a 5-year sentence instead of another 99 years. This rounded out his total sentence to a full 500 years.

He approached the rest of his sentence with his new faith and a new perspective. He told God that he would faithfully serve Him during the rest of his life in prison. He continued to dig into God’s word and read any theology book he could get his hands on from the prison library. He also applied for the nine-month Gang Renouncement and Disassociation Program (or GRAD for short), although his application was originally turned down.

Then one day, an officer came to Ron’s cell to bring him in for a parole interview. At first, Ron assumed there was a mistake since he wasn’t even eligible for parole until the year 2095. But the officer insisted, so Ron got dressed and went with him.

Throughout the parole interview, Ron still believed there had been a mix-up, so he joked his way through all the questions. He returned to his cell and promptly forgot about the event.

But two months later, Ron received a letter out of the blue that said he had made parole on all 5 of his 99-year sentences. He only had to serve out the remainder of his new 5-year sentence and then he would be released.

Ron was stunned.

There was light at the end of the tunnel.

This sparked hope in Ron’s heart, but it also challenged him to spend the rest of his time in prison wisely, following the Lord’s calling on his time.

Knowing His Father

It was during the last few years in prison that Ron would grow in his faith tremendously. He was accepted into the GRAD program and finally left solitary confinement for the first time in 13 years. The classes would change him and his thinking.

Ron was then transferred to another prison facility which had a faith-based discipleship program for inmates. It was in this study where Ron learned who God truly was. He was not an angry and vindictive God like Ron had thought for so long. Instead, He was a loving Father.

Ron’s early parole and release were amazingly beautiful gifts from his Heavenly Father. But God wasn’t done blessing Ron yet.

Another Beautiful Blessing

Ron was released into a new world. When he had been locked up, there had been no smartphones and the internet was still very young. Now he was adjusting to life in 21st century society again.

He got a job in construction and would occasionally share his testimony with churches or ministry gatherings. About 1 year after his release, Ron spoke at event in Waco, Texas. At that event, Ron met Dawn, a woman who had her own painful past with prostitution and incarceration who was now ministering to other women who were in prison.

The two spoke briefly and Ron didn’t think much of it at first. But the Lord impressed on Dawn’s heart while watching Ron give his testimony that he would be her husband.

Dawn had no plans to get married but she couldn’t shake the definite impression on her heart that the Lord wanted her and Ron to be married. So, Dawn asked God to confirm this to her by showing that Ron would speak the word of God over her, pray for her ministry, and even give her yellow roses with red tips.

Meanwhile, Ron knew about none of this. Moreover, Ron never dreamed that he would one day get married. After all, what kind of Christian woman would marry a convicted felon who had been sentenced to 500 years in prison and was now living on life parole?

But the Lord was pressing on his heart to text scripture verses to Dawn every morning and to pray for her as she ministered.

Dawn and several friends were coming into town for a conference and Ron went to pick them up from the airport. Despite his complete lack of romantic feelings for any of the women, he felt compelled by God to pick up some flowers. And of course, God led Ron to pick up yellow roses with red tips. He laid them on the passenger seat and drove to the airport. When Dawn opened the door, she broke into tears.

That evening, Dawn told Ron everything about how the Lord had been speaking to her. But Ron was confused. He wasn’t “in love” with Dawn.

But that evening, once Ron was alone the Lord showed Ron that He was arranging their marriage to build His Kingdom. God planted a love for Dawn in his heart that he couldn’t shake.

Ron and Dawn were married on Christmas Eve, 2016.

Restoration

Three weeks after Ron and Dawn were married, Ron met a guest preacher at his small country church, Robert Newsom.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had met the man before. Then hours later it struck: Robert Newsom was the judge who had sentenced him to the 5 separate 99-year prison sentences almost 30 years ago.

When Ron saw the judge again the following Sunday at church, he revealed who he was. The judge asked if there was any animosity that Ron held, and Ron replied that all of the past was history and he was a new creation in Christ. They embraced and soon became close friends.

Judge Newsom was hosting a weekly prayer meeting in his living room and invited Ron and Dawn to attend, which they did gladly.

Over the next few years, the prayer meeting eventually grew from 25 people to over 400 and moved from the judge’s living room to the city’s civic center, the largest building in the county. The local prison began bussing inmates every Sunday from their cells to the burgeoning church to hear the Gospel and witness the transformation of lives.

Redemption

When Ron was first sentenced as a 19-year-old for half a millennium, he knew there would be no getting out and that all hope was lost.

But it took almost 20 years of being locked up and a decade in solitary confinement before Ron would finally open his heart to the Lord. And what a transformation it made. From a violent gang leader, to a prison evangelist.

It's so encouraging to see how God has used Ron's darkest moments and redeemed those to now touch and change the lives of countless others.

Today, Ron and his wife run Radical Restoration Ministries, a year-round Christian discipleship program for broken women recovering from addiction, abuse, or incarceration - with homes in Florida, Indiana, and Texas.

Ron started his life in prison with no hope of ever seeing the outside world again. He resigned himself to the fate of dying in prison. But God had other plans.

Not only did God orchestrate Ron’s release, his marriage, and his ministry, He also redeemed Ron’s heart.

—
Jace Bower is a writer with a passion for justice and biblical principles. He writes at jacebower.com.

Additional Information

Radical Restoration Ministries. This is the ministry that Ron’s wife Dawn founded before they were married. It’s a year-round Christian discipleship program for broken women recovering from addiction, abuse, or incarceration - with homes in Florida, Indiana, and Texas.